Done

Yesterday at 4:16pm I submitted my D.Phil. at the Exam Schools.

The last few days have been a bit stressful. On Thursday night I made a list of all the really necessary changes before the D.Phil. could be submitted. On Friday, I blitzed through the list and sent the final draft to Josh, who sent me comments at one in the morning, having just returned from a 3-day conference and just before heading out of town for the weekend. (Yes, he's awesome). When I woke up on Saturday, there were two e-mails waiting for me. The first was a short list of small comments, but the second one had for its subject line "stop press." Oh no, I thought. But turned out okay -- Josh had just learned about an important book that I really had to reference. So I went down to the British Library and spent the whole afternoon incorporating that book into my introduction. Anthony was taking his corporate finance exam at the business school.

I spent Saturday evening working on a job application which had to go in on Monday. (Why do deadlines always come in batches?). On Sunday, I got up early to finishing sorting out my footnotes. Anthony and I went out for a lovely walk in the early afternoon, and then came back to push on. I finished off the job application, while Anthony painstakingly combined and formatted all my chapters into a single massive Word document. After church, we both proofread until we couldn't keep our eyes open any longer. (I have the most wonderful husband in the world -- I could never have finished it without him).

I only got 4 hours of sleep on Sunday night, in two two-hour segments. We'd had a light dinner, and I woke up starving at about four in the morning and got myself a piece of pita bread, but was so exhausted that I fell asleep again while eating it. Anthony was amused to find half a piece of pita bread lying on my side of the bed the next day. I got up again shortly after six to carry on proofreading.

I'd finished the introduction and chapter 1 by the time I needed to leave for Oxford. Managed the conclusion on the Tube down to Marble Arch. On the bus to Oxford, I got through most of chapter 2, but found a pretty big tangle near the end that took a long time to sort out.

For the last several days, I'd been keeping obsessive to-do lists in a blue notebook, both changes I needed to make to the thesis and things to take care of on the submission day. I'd also been thinking carefully about all the things I needed to bring with me to Oxford, and had even gathered them into a neat little pile the night before. Great was my distress, therefore, when I got to Oxford and discovered I'd forgotten the blue notebook! Of all the things to leave behind! I'd also forgotten my college keys, when meant I couldn't get into the common room, the college library, the printers, or my locker. Thankfully I didn't end up really needing to get into any of those places, but that discovery unsettled me a bit. Since I couldn't use the college library, I ended up making last minute changes at the History Faculty Library, where I don't normally like to work, but since it's summer, things were pretty quiet over there and it was fine. I sorted out the mess at the end of chapter 2 and managed to read through the introductory and concluding sections of chapters 3 and 4 before I had to head over to the print shop. That unsettled me too. I'd gone through the middle sections of both chapters not long before and Josh had also proofread them, but I wanted to give them a last look to check for typos before submission. But there was no time. Decided, on Josh's advice, to submit anyway. Nobody ever finds all the typos.

While my thesis was being printed and bound, I walked across town to get my submission form signed in college and the History Faculty. It was a really hot day, and I was sweating like crazy. Then it was back across town to collect my thesis from the printer and lug it down to the Exam Schools. ("Lug" being the operative word -- I was carrying not only a heavy backpack and two enormous envelopes (you have to bring envelopes for sending the thesis off to the examiners) but also three bound copies of a 297-page thesis. I was amazed how long it took me to walk from the print shop in Hollywell Street down to the Schools. It's probably just a few hundred yards, but it felt like a mile. All this in blazing heat, remember).

The Schools were very quiet now that the vac has started. I was the only person there except for the girl at the reception desk and the guy who accepted my thesis. I filled out a candidate form, packed the examiners' copies of the thesis into the big envelopes, and turned them in. That was it. They gave me a yellow time-stamped receipt to take away. I snapped a quick photo on the doorstep and then rushed up to North Oxford to meet Josh. He was full of congratulations and bought me an ice cream to celebrate. Then Ben and Bryony bought me a drink at the Turf Tavern, my favorite Oxford pub, and we chatted in the garden there for about an hour. Then I got the bus back to London.

When I got home, Anthony was waiting for me. He'd cleaned the flat (I'd left it looking like who-shot-John-times-three), bought me champagne and three vases of gorgeous roses, and written me a lovely letter. He took me out for dinner at a really nice Chinese restaurant a short walk from our house. Then we came home, enjoyed the champagne, called my parents, and crashed.

And so a chapter in my life ended. I wonder what the next one will be like?